THERE ARE TWO diverse schools of thought on the merits of optimism, both of which will be chalked large on the Salthill blackboard this Sunday.
It is likely Mayo will subscribe to the positive: the one which states that if you always face the sun, you will never see the shadows cast behind.
Galway, most likely, will sneer while looking through their half-empty glass and declare that optimism is merely a lack of information.
First to the sunshine. In the week that is in it, there is some intoxicating first-hand evidence that a slumbering giant, stripped of its identity, cannot only be awoken but also remember who it is and what it stands for when placed under the care of a player legend who knows it best.
The added bonus for Andy Moran and Mayo is this all feels brand new as he is the first to graduate from what was a golden age group – even if it was one not validated by All-Ireland success – to become manager.
Unlike Michael Carrick (the latest in a line of Alex Ferguson graduates charged with marrying sentimentality to success), that buys a little more time and a lot more immediate goodwill.
Put it this way: it is highly unlikely that Lee Keegan, while channelling his inner Roy Keane, will hop into an RTÉ studio anytime soon lamenting Mayo’s failure to land a top outside manager such as Eamonn Fitzmaurice while querying what the hell Boyler has ever done to be parachuted straight into an inter-county coaching role.
There is mercy in that, and deserved too. After all, few counties do optimism — in the short-term at least — as well as Mayo, who tend to not so much to benefit from a managerial bounce as a violent ricochet.
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Galway ran out one-point winners when the sides met last weekend in the FBD League final. Andrew Paton / INPHO
Andrew Paton / INPHO / INPHO
If Moran stays true to a recently established pattern, The Green and Red of Mayo will echo around Croke Park at the end of March, just like it did for James Horan in 2019 – the first year of his second stint – and Kevin McStay in 2023, who both capped bright starts with league silverware.
The thing with a ricochet, though, is what goes up can go anywhere, and both – even Horan’s status as the architect of the county’s emergence as a modern day force did not protect him – left in the end to audible disaffection.
In Moran’s favour this time are tempered expectations – a failure to make the last eight in back-to-back championships tends to put manners on notions – but in Mayo, that just means they will bite hard on their tongues for the opening two rounds of the league.
More in his favour is that a far more important bar has been set even lower, as arguably no team in the country adapted as poorly to a transformed game last season.
Their impotence when it came to momentum-changing two-point conversions jarred. They managed just three across six championship games last summer, and while pre-season form invites as much trust as a Donald Trump trade deal, it is notable that they racked up 11 over the past three weekends.
Cillian O'Connor is back in green and red this season. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
Moran’s instinct for drawing blood from in front of the posts has hardly dulled just because he is no longer kicking at them, and the Monaghan team he coached last summer was defined by their capacity to sting from deep, early and often, converting 25 two-pointers over five games.
Okay, it is a shallow place to set a measuring tape, but the team he coached exploited one of the principal rules changes for 10 points per game, while the team he has now inherited averaged just 1.5 points. There is more than an inch to be surely squeezed from that, but, of course, there is also a question as to whether he has the quality to do so.
For starters, he will have no Rory Beggan at his disposal, which might go some way to explain why he has lured Robbie Hennelly, Cillian O’Connor and James Carr back, while the return to fitness of Tommy Conroy will help more than a bit.
But their appalling two-point conversions extends far beyond kickers to a wider dysfunction in terms of the movement and organisation required to clear out the space to kick those scores, the execution to convert them, and the ambition and aggression in their game-plan to facilitate those opportunities.
Less obvious, but just as costly last season, was also their lack of conviction when kicking out beyond the 40-metre arc from the other side, as their restart strategy was at times hard to decipher and far too easy to play against. Those are fundamentals that Moran will have to address.
Pádraic Joyce is under pressure to deliver after last summer's championship exit to Meath. Laszlo Geczo / INPHO
Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO
However, the notion that Mayo have fallen back from the chasing pack is overegged. Over the past three seasons, they have beaten Kerry, Galway and Tyrone, drawn with Dublin, and lost to Donegal by a point in the championship, which suggests there are grounds for optimism beyond sentimentality.
On the flip side, top teams might get ambushed every now and again by those further down football’s food chain but not, as Roscommon, Cork and Cavan have managed against Mayo, on an annual basis.
That level of inconsistency makes them hard to trust and suggests that while Moran can do a job to make them better, that is still a long way from making them the best.
As for just how long and difficult that road is, they need look no further than their hosts on Sunday to realise it will take something much more substantial than optimism to fuel the journey.
Six years ago, it was the appointment of an iconic figure in Padraic Joyce that had Galway looking into the sun, but after two All-Ireland final defeats and last summer’s shock defeat to Meath, they spent this winter navel-gazing.
The word is that it did not make for pleasant viewing, with the likelihood that Joyce has reached the point of no return if somehow he does not get them across the All-Ireland line this time.
That is the problem with looking into the sun; just because you can’t see the shadow cast does not mean eventually it won’t swallow you up and shut out all the light.
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Two-point shyness, and predictable restarts: Moran has to address Mayo’s fundamentals under new rules
THERE ARE TWO diverse schools of thought on the merits of optimism, both of which will be chalked large on the Salthill blackboard this Sunday.
It is likely Mayo will subscribe to the positive: the one which states that if you always face the sun, you will never see the shadows cast behind.
Galway, most likely, will sneer while looking through their half-empty glass and declare that optimism is merely a lack of information.
First to the sunshine. In the week that is in it, there is some intoxicating first-hand evidence that a slumbering giant, stripped of its identity, cannot only be awoken but also remember who it is and what it stands for when placed under the care of a player legend who knows it best.
The added bonus for Andy Moran and Mayo is this all feels brand new as he is the first to graduate from what was a golden age group – even if it was one not validated by All-Ireland success – to become manager.
Unlike Michael Carrick (the latest in a line of Alex Ferguson graduates charged with marrying sentimentality to success), that buys a little more time and a lot more immediate goodwill.
Put it this way: it is highly unlikely that Lee Keegan, while channelling his inner Roy Keane, will hop into an RTÉ studio anytime soon lamenting Mayo’s failure to land a top outside manager such as Eamonn Fitzmaurice while querying what the hell Boyler has ever done to be parachuted straight into an inter-county coaching role.
There is mercy in that, and deserved too. After all, few counties do optimism — in the short-term at least — as well as Mayo, who tend to not so much to benefit from a managerial bounce as a violent ricochet.
If Moran stays true to a recently established pattern, The Green and Red of Mayo will echo around Croke Park at the end of March, just like it did for James Horan in 2019 – the first year of his second stint – and Kevin McStay in 2023, who both capped bright starts with league silverware.
The thing with a ricochet, though, is what goes up can go anywhere, and both – even Horan’s status as the architect of the county’s emergence as a modern day force did not protect him – left in the end to audible disaffection.
In Moran’s favour this time are tempered expectations – a failure to make the last eight in back-to-back championships tends to put manners on notions – but in Mayo, that just means they will bite hard on their tongues for the opening two rounds of the league.
More in his favour is that a far more important bar has been set even lower, as arguably no team in the country adapted as poorly to a transformed game last season.
Their impotence when it came to momentum-changing two-point conversions jarred. They managed just three across six championship games last summer, and while pre-season form invites as much trust as a Donald Trump trade deal, it is notable that they racked up 11 over the past three weekends.
Moran’s instinct for drawing blood from in front of the posts has hardly dulled just because he is no longer kicking at them, and the Monaghan team he coached last summer was defined by their capacity to sting from deep, early and often, converting 25 two-pointers over five games.
Okay, it is a shallow place to set a measuring tape, but the team he coached exploited one of the principal rules changes for 10 points per game, while the team he has now inherited averaged just 1.5 points. There is more than an inch to be surely squeezed from that, but, of course, there is also a question as to whether he has the quality to do so.
For starters, he will have no Rory Beggan at his disposal, which might go some way to explain why he has lured Robbie Hennelly, Cillian O’Connor and James Carr back, while the return to fitness of Tommy Conroy will help more than a bit.
But their appalling two-point conversions extends far beyond kickers to a wider dysfunction in terms of the movement and organisation required to clear out the space to kick those scores, the execution to convert them, and the ambition and aggression in their game-plan to facilitate those opportunities.
Less obvious, but just as costly last season, was also their lack of conviction when kicking out beyond the 40-metre arc from the other side, as their restart strategy was at times hard to decipher and far too easy to play against. Those are fundamentals that Moran will have to address.
However, the notion that Mayo have fallen back from the chasing pack is overegged. Over the past three seasons, they have beaten Kerry, Galway and Tyrone, drawn with Dublin, and lost to Donegal by a point in the championship, which suggests there are grounds for optimism beyond sentimentality.
On the flip side, top teams might get ambushed every now and again by those further down football’s food chain but not, as Roscommon, Cork and Cavan have managed against Mayo, on an annual basis.
That level of inconsistency makes them hard to trust and suggests that while Moran can do a job to make them better, that is still a long way from making them the best.
As for just how long and difficult that road is, they need look no further than their hosts on Sunday to realise it will take something much more substantial than optimism to fuel the journey.
Six years ago, it was the appointment of an iconic figure in Padraic Joyce that had Galway looking into the sun, but after two All-Ireland final defeats and last summer’s shock defeat to Meath, they spent this winter navel-gazing.
The word is that it did not make for pleasant viewing, with the likelihood that Joyce has reached the point of no return if somehow he does not get them across the All-Ireland line this time.
That is the problem with looking into the sun; just because you can’t see the shadow cast does not mean eventually it won’t swallow you up and shut out all the light.
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